Approximately 860 acres of farmland in Taylor County, Iowa, sold for a total of $3,148,000 Friday, as farmer operators continued to be the strongest buyers of smaller tracts of land. "These were very good prices for the location and type of land, and well above recent prices achieved in Taylor County," said Joe Bubon, executive vice president of Murray Wise Associates, which marketed the property and conducted the auction. "None of these tracts was 100 percent tillable, and taken as a whole, the estimated tillable land was 559 acres, though interest was substantial on the recreational land as well," said Bubon.

The auction attracted approximately 35 bidders and a crowd of 135. "We offered the land in 10 tracts, and while there were bidders making offers on a number of different combinations of tracts, seven out of the 10 tracts sold individually," said Bubon. The biggest purchase of the day was for three tracts totaling 278 acres, which sold for $1,025,000, or $3,687 per acre. Prices on the farmland tracts ranged from $3,251 to $4,487 per acre.

Murray Wise Associates LLC, headquartered in Champaign, Ill., with additional offices in Florida, Idaho and Iowa, is a leading national agricultural real estate marketing and auction company. The company also manages farmland assets for individual clients in Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin.